By Mumtaz Alam Falahi, TwoCircles.net,
Patna: The Bombay High Court today issued notice to the central and state government on a petition seeking high-level probe into the killing of Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare and two other higher police officers during the 26/11 terror attack in Mumbai in 2008.
Radhakant Yadav
Veteran socialist and three-time MLA from Madhepura in Bihar, Radhakant Yadav, had approached the High Court on August 6. The court heard his petition today and issued notice to the governments asking them to reply within four weeks to the petitioner’s demand for a competent authority into the killing.
Talking to TCN soon after the court notice, Radhakant Yadav said he urged the court to order a probe by a competent authority like CBI or any other agency that the court thinks fit for the job. He reiterated his point that the killing of Karkare has something more than meets the eye.
Karkare had become an eyesore for Hindutva terrorists and terror groups whose role in some terror bombings in the country he was exposing. Weeks before the Mumbai attack he had exposed the hand of Hindutva terrorists in the 2008 Malegaon blast and had arrested Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Col Purohit and others. He was threatened for the probe and during the Mumbai attack by Pakistani terrorists he was killed in mysterious circumstances.
Impressed by the book “Who Killed Karkare? – The real face of terrorism in India”, written by former Inspector General of Police SM Mushrif, a 70-something Lohiaite, Yadav earlier this year approached the Supreme Court with a PIL seeking constitution of an independent fact-finding committee, headed by a sitting or a retired judge of the Supreme Court, to look into the events before Karkare’s killing. He had submitted that there was an abject failure of the state in protecting the citizens of the country from terrorists, including the death of officers like ATS chief Karkare. He had also contended that the entire Mumbai terror attack should not be seen as single episode but two different attacks.
A bench of Justice B. Sudershan Reddy and Justice Surinder Singh Nijjar had rejected Yadav’s PIL on May 12 but gave him the liberty to move the high court.